dormancy, state of reduced metabolic activity adopted by many organisms under conditions of environmental stress or, often, as in winter, when such stressful conditions are likely to appear.

There are few environments in which organisms are not subject to some kind of stress. Some animals migrate vast distances to avoid unfavourable situations; others reduce environmental stresses by modifying their behaviour and the habitats (immediate surroundings) that they occupy. Arctic lemmings, for example, are able to avoid severe winter weather by confining their life in winter to activities beneath the snow cover. Still another mechanism used by some organisms to avoid stressful environmental conditions is that of dormancy, during which an organism conserves the amount of energy available to it and makes few demands on its environment. Most major groups of animals as well as plants have some representatives that can become dormant. Periods of dormancy vary in length and in degree of metabolic reduction, ranging from only slightly lower metabolism during the periodic, short-duration dormancy of deep sleep to more extreme reductions for extended periods of time.

General observations

Value of dormancy

In terms of evolution, dormancy seems to have evolved independently among a wide variety of living things, and the mechanisms for dormancy vary with the morphological and physiological makeup of each organism. For many plants and animals, dormancy has become an essential part of the life cycle, allowing an organism to pass through critical environmental stages in its life cycle with a minimal impact on the organism itself. When lakes, ponds, or rivers dry up, for example, aquatic organisms that can enter a period of dormancy survive, while others perish. Moreover, animals that can become dormant during the extreme cold of winter can extend their ranges into regions where animals incapable of dormancy cannot live. Dormancy also ensures that these animals will be free from competition during their periods of activity. Thus, dormancy is an adaptive mechanism that allows an organism to meet environmental stresses and to take advantage of environmental niches that otherwise would be untenable at certain times.

Causes of dormancy

The dormant state that is induced in an organism during periods of environmental stress may be caused by a number of variables. Those of major importance in contributing to the onset of dormancy include changes in temperature and photoperiod and the availability of food, water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. In general, because organisms normally exist within a relatively narrow temperature range, temperatures above or below the limits of this range can induce dormancy in certain organisms. Temperature changes also affect such other environmental parameters as the availability of food, water, and oxygen, thus providing further stimuli for dormancy. In Arctic regions, for example, certain animals become dormant during the winter months, when food is less abundant. In desert biomes, on the other hand, the summer months, which may be periods of reduced food availability, intense heat, or extreme aridity, stimulate some desert organisms to become dormant. The lack of water during summer periods of drought or winter periods of freezing, as well as annual changes in the duration and intensity of light, particularly at high latitudes, are other environmental factors that can induce dormant states.

Under natural conditions, most of the environmental variables that influence dormancy are interrelated in a cyclical pattern that is either circadian or annual. Fluctuations in the major daily variables—light and temperature—can induce rhythmical changes in the metabolic activity of an organism; annual fluctuations in temperature and photoperiod can influence the availability of food and water. Concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide normally do not vary on a cyclical basis but as a result of habitat selection, such as burrowing in the mud, seeking a den, or other similar activities, in which the metabolic responses of the organism can alter the oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations in its environment.

In an attempt to determine the relative influence of environmental factors upon dormancy, they have been varied experimentally. Investigations indicate that an organism, after it has adapted to a sequence of cyclical rhythms, tends to maintain its adaptive behaviour even though the environmental stimulus that originally elicited such behaviour is no longer present. For example, the Arctic ground squirrel (whose winter period of dormancy is referred to as hibernation), when taken into the laboratory, supplied with adequate amounts of food and water, and exposed to constant temperature and light, exhibits periodic torpor (extreme sluggishness)—an innate behavioral pattern that operates independently of environmental cues. Other animals frequently will continue to respond as if they were exposed to the cyclical changes of their home environments after they are removed from their natural habitats.

Cysts and cystlike structures

Protozoans

Many parasitic and free-living protozoans (one-celled animals) exhibit a dormant stage by secreting a protective cyst. The stimulus for cyst formation in free-living protozoans may be temperature changes, pollution, or lack of food or water. Euglena, a protozoan that encysts to avoid environmental extremes, has two kinds of cysts. Apparently one is formed only to avoid stressful conditions; the other is formed for the same reason but also involves asexual reproduction, resulting in a cyst that may contain up to 32 daughter organisms, which emerge under proper environmental conditions.

Free-living protozoans form cysts around themselves and avoid environmental extremes, but cysts are a part of the life cycle of parasitic protozoans. The causative agent of amebic dysentery, Entamoeba histolytica, is found in the intestine of infected individuals, in whom it forms cysts that pass to the outside in feces. When food or water containing cysts enters the digestive tract of another person, the amoebas are released from the cysts and infect the new host. Without encystment, which allows the organism to live in a dormant state in an unfavourable environment (e.g., water), amebic dysentery could be much more easily controlled. Protected by the cyst wall, however, the dormant contents of the cyst can survive for weeks. Although they are not particularly resistant to drying, the cysts of E. histolytica can withstand temperatures of up to 68 °C (154 °F) for five minutes. They are also resistant to certain chemicals.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.